Special guest Louie Mantia joins the show to talk about Liquid Glass, the various OS 26 updates, and the worrisome state of Apple’s UI design overall. Also: sandwiches. 

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Transcripts: <a href="http://podsearch.david-smith.org/shows/11">Unofficial but surprisingly good</a>.

Links:

<ul>
<li><a href="https://lmnt.me/">Louie’s personal website</a>, chock full of downloadable wallpapers, icons, and more.</li>
<li>Louie, on Alan Dye: “<a href="https://lmnt.me/blog/a-responsibility-to-the-industry.html">A Responsibility to the Industry</a>”.</li>
<li><a href="https://pdx.social/@louie">Louie on Mastodon</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://parakeet.co/">Parakeet</a>, Louie’s design partnership with Luka Grafera.</li>
<li><a href="https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/428/sj-itunes-icon.jpeg">Steve Jobs introducing the new icon for iTunes that Louie made</a> (the best iTunes icon ever).</li>
<li>Daring Fireball: “<a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/24/sorry-macos-tahoe-b2-finder-icon">Sorry, MacOS Tahoe Beta 2 Still Does the Finder Icon Dirty</a>” (with links, at the bottom, to Louie’s mockup of how Liquid Glass versions of the Finder icon should look).</li>
<li>My polls on light/dark mode preferences on your phone: <a href="https://mastodon.social/@gruber/114932041394942073">Mastodon</a> and <a href="https://www.threads.com/@gruber/post/DMqPCUkuGVN">Threads</a>.</li>
<li><a href="https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/openstep42">NeXTStep’s GUI and icons</a>, including the realistic “folders” and super-detailed “home” with shrubbery and a tree in front of the house (and <a href="https://itoda.com/next/openstep/icons/index-en.html">another collection just of NeXTStep’s icons</a>).</li>
<li><a href="http://redweld.com/expanding-files/">Redweld</a> — Makers of the iconic (no pun intended) expandable files that NeXT’s folder icons were based on.</li>
<li>The wonderfully skeuomorphic original interfaces for Apple’s iPhone <a href="https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-iphone-book/9780133016529/ch07sec1lev32.html">Voice Memos</a> and <a href="https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/iphone/podcasts-for-iphone-in-2012">Podcasts</a> apps.</li>
<li><a href="https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/428/HumanInterfaceGuidelines-1986.pdf">A July 1986 draft of the original Human Interface Guidelines</a> (PDF) from Apple, including a brief section on “Perceived Stability” (followed by a section on “See-and-Point versus Remember-and-Type”).</li>
</ul>

This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.

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